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Human Security

Message from UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet on the occasion of World AIDS Day, 1 December 2011.

Editorial:

Today on World AIDS Day, we are called to action to achieve zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. On behalf of UN Women, I would like to stress that getting to zero requires zero discrimination against women and girls.

As the world experiences increasing inequalities and gaps between and within countries, women’s rights organizations are working to challenge current hegemonic systems and develop alternatives for change. Building on feminist economic analyses, the Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL) is undertaking the production of periodic briefs - Nexus: Shaping Feminist Visions in the 21st Century - to enhance women’s leadership for the realization of human rights. The briefs aim to both engender analytical and practical approaches to human rights in general, and economic and social rights in particular, as well as strengthen the capacity of feminist and social justice movements.

Brief Number 1 - "Making Macroeconomics Work For US: A Feminist Perspective" - highlights linkages between macroeconomics and human rights in order to better inform discussions about solutions to the current economic crisis in the United States.

This report is the culmination of a two-day experts meeting, “Macroeconomics and the Rights to Water and Sanitation,” which took place in Lisbon, Portugal from March 31 to April 1, 2011. The meeting was organized as a means to contribute to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation’s work on gender equality and macroeconomics. To this end the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) in collaboration with the Special Rapporteur brought together economists, researchers and advocacy specialists working from a feminist perspective to offer analyses and recommendations.

The Government of Afghanistan took a big step forward in support of women’s equality and protection of women’s rights when it enacted the Law on the Elimination of Violence against Women (EVAW law) in August 2009. The landmark legislation criminalizes for the first time in Afghanistan child marriage, forced marriage, forced self-immolation and 19 other acts of violence against women including rape, and specifies punishments for perpetrators. This report from the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) examines implementation of the EVAW law by judicial and law enforcement officials throughout Afghanistan for the period of March 2010 to September 2011, and identifies both positive progress and large gaps.

About 2.1 million Mexicans are employed as domestic workers, with women accounting for about 90 percent of such employees, and the majority lack employment contracts, are not registered in the social security system and are subjected to discrimination, long work days, poor pay and other forms of abuse, the National Council to Prevent Discrimination, or Conapred, said.

About 2.1 million Mexicans are employed as domestic workers, with women accounting for about 90 percent of such employees, and the majority lack employment contracts, are not registered in the social security system and are subjected to discrimination, long work days, poor pay and other forms of abuse, the National Council to Prevent Discrimination, or Conapred, said.

The figures come from a survey of domestic workers that was conducted in association with U.N. Women and the International Labor Organization, or ILO, Conapred said in a report presented to the Senate.

The 2010 National Survey on Discrimination in Mexico, or Enadis, found that 38 percent of domestic workers consider excessive work and low pay the main problems facing them, while 19.3 percent complained of mistreatment and discrimination, among other abuses, as well as the lack of labor rights.

A law meant to protect Afghan women from a host of abusive practices, including rape, forced marriage and the trading of women to settle disputes, is being undermined by spotty enforcement, the U.N. said in a report released Wednesday.

A law meant to protect Afghan women from a host of abusive practices, including rape, forced marriage and the trading of women to settle disputes, is being undermined by spotty enforcement, the U.N. said in a report released Wednesday.

Afghanistan’s Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women was passed in August 2009, raising hopes among women’s rights activists that Afghan women would get to fight back against abuses that had been ignored under Taliban rule. The law criminalized many abuses for the first time, including domestic violence, child marriage, driving a woman to resort to suicide and the selling and buying of women.

Yet the report found only a small percentage of reported crimes against women are pursued by the Afghan government.

Between March 2010 and March 2011 — the first full Afghan year the law was in effect — prosecutors opened 594 investigations involving crimes under the law. That’s only 26 percent of the 2,299 incidents registered by the Afghan human rights commission, the report said. And prosecutors went on to file indictments in only 155 cases, or 7 percent of the total number of crimes reported.

Sometimes victims were pressured to withdraw their complaints or to settle for mediation by traditional councils, the report said. Sometimes prosecutors didn’t proceed with mandatory investigations for violent acts like rape or prostitution. Other times, police simply ignored complaints.

To protect and empower girls, programs must start with the girls themselves. This approach – one that meets girls where they are in their lives – was the foundation for an innovative participatory action research pilot project, which aimed to both understand and respond to girls’ HIV-related vulnerabilities. Working with older girls ages 12-17 and their communities in Newala District, one of the least developed and poorly resourced districts of Tanzania, the project's ultimate goal was to design and qualitatively assess a pilot intervention model to address the most pressing vulnerabilities of adolescent girls. This brief report summarizes the process and findings of the participatory action research with lessons for researchers, development practitioners and policymakers working with adolescent girls.

Economically empowering women is essential both to realize women’s rights and to achieve broader development goals such as economic growth, poverty reduction, health, education and welfare. But women’s economic empowerment is a multifaceted concept so how can practitioners, researchers and donors design effective, measurable interventions?

This brief report lays out fundamental concepts including a definition of women’s economic empowerment; a measurement framework that can guide the design, implementation and evaluation of programs to economically empower women; and a set of illustrative indicators that can serve as concrete examples for developing meaningful metrics for success.

A Decade Lost: Locating Gender in U.S. Counter-Terrorism provides the first global study of how the U.S. government's (USG) counter-terrorism efforts proffoundly implicate and impact women and sexual minorities. Over the last decade of the United States' "War on Terror," the oft-unspoken assumption that men suffer the most—both numerically and in terms of the nature of rights violations endured—has obscured the way women and sexual minorities experience counter-terrorism, rendering their rights violations invisible to policymakers and the human rights community alike. This failure to consider either the differential impacts of counter-terrorism on women, men, and sexual minorities or the ways in which such measures use and affect gender stereotypes and relations cannot continue.

Even in urbanized Navi Mumbai, the majority of women in India do not have a say in deciding when to have a baby, the size of their family or the type of contraception to use. In other words, their reproductive life is dictated by their families. The Cidco survey found up that only 33.2% of the surveyed women decided on their reproductive rights.

Editorial:

From the article:

Even in urbanized Navi Mumbai, the majority of women do not have a say in deciding when to have a baby, the size of their family or the type of contraception to use. In other words, their reproductive life is dictated by their families. These are some of the findings of Cidco survey.

The report showed up that only 33.2% of the surveyed women decided on their reproductive rights. "The present survey shows that about a third of women have felt they have reproductive rights,'' the survey said. The remaining 66.8% followed the decisions made by men on having a child, the space between two children, the use of contraceptives , and such others.

There is a great variation across nodes as well. While 58% of women in Kharghar said they took their own decisions , only 1% women in Dronagri replied in the affirmative. Approximately 48% women in Jui Kamothe took their own decisions, while the figure for New Panvel was 11%. Even in Vashi-the oldest and the most urbanized centre-only 41% women took their own decisions .

Experts said the failure to allow women to exercise their rights has led to a poor child sex ratio as well. A Cidco official blamed the lower ratio on test centres that have come up as part of urbanization . Gynaecologists such as Dr Uday Thanawalla attributed the bias to the "ingrained conditioning that one should have a male child" .

The 2011 national population census has said that in the case of Thane district, the urban child sex ratio for females has fallen from 915 (2001 census) to 905, and for rural areas, from 966 to 953. In case of Raigad district, the ratio in urban areas has fallen from 914 to 903, and in rural areas, from 946 to 937. While Airoli to Belapur in Navi Mumbai come under Thane district, Kharghar, Panvel and Dronagri are under Raigad district.

The Cidco survey said, "The ability of women to control their own fertility is absolutely fundamental to women's empowerment and equality. When a woman can plan her family, she can plan the rest of her life. When she is healthy, she can be more productive. And when her reproductive rights-including the right to decide the number , timing and spacing of her children, and to make decisions regarding reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence-are promoted and protected, she has the freedom to participate fully and equally in society."

The survey also states that 29-30 % of working women have a say in their reproductive rights.